Sears Tower gets green with a new luxury hotel and makeover

As America’s tallest building, the Sears Tower looms above the Chicago skyline like a shiny, black beacon, paying homage to its 30-year-old roots in American industry. Due to be renamed the Willis Tower this summer, the property’s skydeck (think Ferris Bueller) attracts hundreds of visitors and tourists each day, while its walls contain over 4.5 million square feet of office and retail space.

Though beyond impressive in scale, design and stature, the 110-story monolithic structure certainly has a long way to go in order to wow the environmental crowd. The building’s size and usage allot for a huge carbon footprint, as well as a tremendous waste of space when it comes down to energy efficiency and production.

This is all about to change, as project managers for the Tower have unveiled plans for a $350 million “greenover” that will take advantage of the building’s grand scale. Standing at 110 stories, the new retrofit calls for the installation of high-power wind turbines, solar panels and green roofs.

American Landmark Properties, the property group that owns the 110-story building in partnership with New York-based investors Joseph Chetrit and Joseph Moinian, announced that the retrofit would help maintain the building’s competitive edge long into the future.

“We baby boomers have done a lot of things to the planet that are not very admirable,” said John M. Huston, who co-heads American Landmark Properties with Yisroel Gluck. “We need to correct some of those things. When I leave this building, I want it to be in better shape than when I arrived five years ago.”

The energy generated by the new installation will help power a new luxury, 50-story hotel to be built beside the tower. The hotel, which will be designed to meet LEED Gold certification, will also feature sky gardens at various levels and a solar deck – an indoor garden covered by a solar harvesting dome.

“If we can take care of one building that size, it has a huge impact on society,” said Adrian Smith, one of the architects behind the retrofit project. “It is a village in and of itself.”

Upgrades will also include energy efficient lighting and climate control systems. In addition, 16,000 single pane windows will be re-glazed to provide over half of the energy savings, and a condensation recovery system will help reduce water consumption.

Thinking outside the box

A Sustainable Technology Learning Center is planned to educate visitors and tourists on practical methods to save energy and money.

“Sustainable architecture in new buildings is important but not enough to address the climate and energy crises facing our world,” said Gordon Gill, partner of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture. “We have to apply what we’ve learned to our existing stock of commercial buildings — especially iconic structures such as Sears Tower, which we hope will inspire similar initiatives around the globe.”

When all is said and done, the project will increase energy savings by 80% over the next five years, saving enough electricity to power a Chicago neighborhood of 2,500 homes for a year, while water conservation is projected at 24 million gallons per year.